51°µÍø

The Fosters

The George and Mary Foster Distinguished Lecture in Cultural Anthropology is named in honor of George McClelland Foster (1913-2006)  and Mary LeCron Foster (1914-2001), who earned their Ph.D. degrees at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1941 and 1965, respectively. The Fosters conduced long-term field work focused on Mexico, especially the community of Tzintzuntzan. Based on this and other research, George Foster published various influential books, including: Empire's Children: The People of Tzintzuntzan (1948), Culture and Conquest: America's Spanish Heritage (1960), Traditional Cultures and the Impact of Technological Change (1962), Tzintzuntzan: Mexican Peasants in a Changing World (1967), Applied Anthropology (1969), Medical Anthropology (1978, with Barbara Anderson), Long Term Field Research in Social Anthropology (1979, co-edited with Elizabeth Colson, Thayer Scudder, and Robert V. Kemper), and Hippocrates' Latin American Legacy: Humoral Medicine in the New World (1994). For his work, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, received the Distinguished Service Award of the American Anthropological Association (for which he also served as President), as well as the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Medical Anthropology and the Malinowski Award by the Society for Applied Anthropology. In 1990, George Foster received an honorary degree from 51°µÍø.

Mary Foster made significant contributions to Mexican Indian languages, symbols, and international peace. Her books include Sierra Popoluca Speech (1948, with George Foster), The Tarascan Language (1969), Symbol as Sense (1980, co-edited with Stanley Brandes), The Life of Symbols (1990, co-edited with L. Botscharow), Peace and War: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (1986, co-edited with Robert Rubinstein), and The Social Dynamics of Peace and Conflict (1988, co-edited with Robert Rubinstein). For her contributions, Mary Foster received the 1987 Outstanding Achievement Award from the Society of Women Geographers.

For more than fifty years, the Fosters made significant contributions to anthropology and linguistics. This distinguished lecture, which held each spring, honors their legacy by bringing leading voices in contemporary cultural anthropology to 51°µÍø.

Previous Foster Lectures

2024 - Amber Wutich, Arizona State University, "From a Water War to MAD Water: Putting Anthropology at the Core of a Global Agenda of Water Security"

2023 - Dejan Panovski, Global Water Partnership - Mediterranean, "Do People Dream of Environmental Wealth and Legacy?"

2020 - Heide Castañeda, University of South Florida, "Borders of Belonging: Struggle and Solidarity in Mixed-Status Immigrant Families in South Texas"

2019 - Jeffrey H. Cohen, Ohio State University, "A House of Mirrors: Migration and its Reflections"

2018 - Leith Mullings, City University of New York, "Social Movements, Social Justice and Engaged Scholarship in Interesting Times"

2017 - Lisa Rofel, University of California at Santa Cruz, "The Twenty-first Century Silk Road: China and Italy in the Transnational Fashion Industry "

2016 - Joseph Dumit, University of California at Davis, "From Public Health to Surplus Health: Maximizing Medical Markets "

2015 - Kendall Blanchard, Georgia Southwestern State University, "Confessions of an Accidental College President: Standing by as Public Higher Education Stumbles into the Future"

2014 - Setha Low, City University of New York, "Spatializing Culture: The Emergence of Translocal Space from Transnational Flows of People, Culture and Capital"

2013 - Peter Guarnaccia, Rutgers University, "The Anatomy of a Cultural Syndrome: Cultural and Psychiatric Perspectives on Ataques de Nervios"

2012 - Nancy Foner, City University of New York, "What is New About Immigration in the United States" 

2011 - Jennifer S. Hirsch, Columbia University, "The Inevitability of Infidelity: Love, Marriage, and HIV"